Legendary Pokemon / TLR General Discussion Thread

[zarator]

The issue

Ever since Rootinabox ravaged Smogon forum, we had to close TLR due to the fact some critical data went lost with social groups. Now, while some of you may think that the purpose of this thread is just to call for a restoration of TLR, this is not the case. Personally, I think there are some deep problems with TLR which, after years since it first opened, finally require to be discussed in a place like this.

The Legend Run has been designed to be a difficult Roleplay. So difficult, probably, that no other ASB challenge even remotely compares to it - especially to the Legendary TLRs. However, I think we went a bit too far with it. To put things in perspective (note - all times has been cut by 4 months to match May 12th, the date of Rootinabox's attack):

- Mysterious Cove has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011 (i.e. 1 year and 8 months): ever since, 5 people obtained a Phione out of 24 people attempting it.
- Ice Spire has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011: ever since, 5 people obtained a Regice out of 23 people attempting it
- Rock Crag has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011: ever since, 7 people obtained Regirock out of 19 people attempting
- Iron Dungeon has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011: ever since, 5 people obtained Registeel out of 17 people attempting
- Heaven's Ascent has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011 (although it requires the above three raids to be completed before entering): ever since, 2 people tried and none succeeded
- Black Sulphur Caldera has been opened since Jan 31st, 2012 (1 year and 4 months): ever since, 8 people tried and none succeeded
- Windswept Meadow has been opened since May 11th, 2012 (1 year): ever since, 6 people tried and none succeeded
- Glacial Cave has been opened since Sep 30th, 2012 (8 months): ever since, 2 people tried and none succeeded
- Ruined Eden has been opened since Nov 10th, 2012 (6 months ago): ever since, 4 people tried and none succeeded
- Four Swords Quest has been opened since Apr 21st, 2013 (20 days): ever since, none tried it.

What does this data tell us? Some considerations:
1) Mysterious Cove really doesn't have the difficulty level it should have: for a beginner's TLR it's really damn hard. The win/loss ratio is lower than all Timeless Tower dungeons bar HA. And the large majority of teams which did manage to catch Phione really didn't look like beginner's teams by any definition of the word "beginner"
2) Something is wrong with the TLRs released past Timeless Tower: even putting aside the fact none ever got a legend from any of these (and aside from BSC and The Wanderer's Windswept Meadow run, none even got to see the legends, let alone having a veritable chance to catch them), it's not a good sign that a challenge which has been around with nearly two years - with such a large reward - has been challenged for only, what? Eight times? Less? I mean come on, there are some Gym leaders out here who've been challenged with over double that frequency!

Why is TLR so inaccessible?

One thing which is striking about The Legend Run is its inaccessibility. No RP with a comparable lifespan has had such a low amount of challenges over this kind of time. I think the main reason is that TLR is awfully frustrating, challenging, and risky for a variety of factors:
1) The Legend Run is time consuming: No RP (not even raids) ever compared to the length of a TLR. We're talking about between 30 and 50 rounds reffed for each successful run. That's a crazy amount of rounds reffed (to put things in perspective, the maximum amount of rounds ever reffed in a raid was roughly 25 or 26). Each person wanting to try and catch a legend is looking forward to at least two months of battling before getting a chance to catch the legendary. What's worse, unless the raid in question has been played a lot of times (like TT), the chances of failure approach 100%. A raider attempting to conquer, say, Ruined Eden, Heaven's Ascent or Glacial Cave has a lot of months of trial and fail before getting a chance to win.
2) The Legend Run is counter consuming: The amount of counters required to go into a TLR with some degree of success is ludicrous. Unless someone is lucky enough to have three trained mons which already fit the bill perfectly, he has to buy one to three new mons, and spend a lot of time (or universal counters if you're rich) to get them into shape - because unlike raids, you really need trained Pokemon for TLR due to the vast support movepools required. Then there's consummables and Poke Balls, which cost a sizeable amount of CC too. And what's worse, if you end up failing, a lot of those CC basically went wasted. If you're looking to try a not-fully-scouted TLR (read: not TT/MC/perhaps BSC) you'll need either a friend who scouts before/after you, or an impossibly high amount of CC to pay for your runs (unless you're just scouting the first two-three battles or something).
3) The Legend Run is extremely luck based: The kind of influence RNG has over TLRs is ridiculous. There's a lot of events which are completely RNG based. In 30-50 rounds of battling, RNG ends up mattering a lot - especially because unlike raids, your chances to minimize hax are much lower against a human opponent who doesn't just attack like raid bosses. And finally, catching a legendary is EXTREMELY luck based. Even in the nearly impossible situation that you got the legendary to 1% HP and sleeping, you're looking to a 22ish % catch chance (half the time, because Sports Ball). But we're talking about Pokemon with skyhigh stats, full movepools (including shit like Rest), and cruel arenas on your side. Unless your ref is particularly bad or unlucky, your chances to lock a legendary into such "favourable" odds are slim... in which case you're looking at 10% or so chances to catch, if not less.
4) The Legend Run is hard: it may sound odd, maybe obvious, but some TLR encounters are really damn hard - especially when you don't just need to win. You either need to win with enough life/energy to continue or you need to expose yourself to try and catch the opposing Pokemon. Then there are traps, arena effects, all sort of elements which make most TLR battles extremely harsh (even way before meeting the legend).
5) The Legend Run is incredibly info sensitive: Due to the huge amount of events, wild encounters, random effects and so on, the amount of information required to stand a chance in a TLR is ridiculous. But, unlike raids, the amount of scouting required to get it right is even worse. In raids, you generally need one, in the rarest cases two tries to get a good idea of what the boss can do and how to beat it. But in TLR, with a range of encounter events ranging from five-six to ten or more, you may need three, four, five attempts if not more, before having good info about the TLR itself. Even getting up to the legend once doesn't necessarily help you a lot for next attempt, because a lot of stuff you could've just missed because of RNG and thus not have the info available.

Now, none of these factors, take alone, is unbearable. It's their combination which is overpowering. To give you an idea:
- Not only a Legend Run is time consuming because of its sheer structure (point 1). You may require more tries to get it done (see point 5), thus extending the time you need to invest. You may need to spend time to gather the required resources, be them trained mons or CC for items (see point 2). A simple RNG not going your way can shut down your run and forcing you to have to go all the way again (see point 4), thus prolonging your time WAY beyond the 2 months I set as bare minimum if you get it done 1st try.
- A Legend Run is already counter consuming in itself (point 2). But if someone has to spend counters repeatedly just to scout the TLR (see point 5), or just loses because of an overwhelming encounter (see point 4) or maybe because of bad RNG (see point 2), he may have to fuel enough counters to pay 3, 4, 5 more runs than expected. And the majority of people with remotely good mons do not live just for TLR - there are Gym Challenges, other RPs, etc to pay time for.

And I could put down many other perspectives about it. The point is, each aspect of TLR's difficulty synergizes with others to make each aspect even more mean that it would be if taken on its own. For example, imagine if you had to wait 3 months in-game just to retry to catch a legendary Pokemon... and you can throw only one Poke Ball per day. And you can only use two Pokemon in a Double battle against an AI controlled opponent with tailored movepools. And if it's Ho-Oh there's perma-sunlight, of course. I think you're getting where I'm going.

Now, there's a lot more which could be said. And I don't want to make coherent proposals in the OP yet because they'd sway discussion too soon. I first want some input on the issue I've outlined, namely:

- The Legend Run is, arguably, the least challenged Roleplay among all the Roleplay with a comparable lifespan. The amount of issued challenges is abysmally small, and the win/loss ratio is even smaller.
Related questions:
- Is there a problem with TLR's accessibility? Could TLR be made more accessible without reducing the amount of skill required to complete it?
- Are all the TLR as difficult as they're intended too? Does the info gap between MC/TT and the other TLRs constitute a serious bump in the road for the attendance of other TLRs? What info do we actually need to keep secret, and why?
- Are all the aspects of TLR's difficulty equally important to us? Are all they wanted, or are some a byproduct of changeable policies? Can/should some of these factors be weakened to provide a more enjoyable/accessible experience?
- Last, but not least: what are our thoughts on legendary Pokemon in ASB? What's the role we intend to see them assuming? How common/rare should they be? How much accessible should they be? Are they intended for Gym challenges? Tournaments? RPs? How beneficial/threatening can legends be to the ASB's environment? What have been the impact of currently caught legends on ASB so far?
If someone feels there are related questions I didn't state here, feel free to propose them



Please discuss, and stay on topic. I understand it will be hard, given the complexity of the issue. But I'm confident you'll do your best.

 

[Maxim]

As a TLR ref myself, I hope I can provide some insight into this topic.

- Is there a problem with TLR's accessibility? Could TLR be made more accessible without reducing the amount of skill required to complete it?

Truth be told, there's a huge problem with TLR's accessibility. Due to the rather huge difficulty of many TLR's (believe me, TT is a kiddie pool compared to some of the Uber Dungeons), it tends to require a very detailed strategy. Trouble is, it's very difficult to come up with anything more than a general strategy because, while each TLR is generally balanced towards one or two types, sometimes a wild card is thrown in that is designed to make sure the TLR in question isn't stomped by a single strategy (i.e. Earthquake Spam). Thus, you have a lot of people bringing in teams that fall, not because they were horribly planned, but because the designers made sure to have measures to make sure TLR's don't devolve into "Use X super effective move till the encounter dies."

Thus, I see two primary problems with the accessibility:
-First, the counter cost. This is probably THE biggest hurdle in any Roleplay, because TLR's, if you want a good chance at them, require a ludicrous CC cost. To put down an example, after much thought and effort, I've come to the conclusion that to make a viable challenge towards the Windswept Meadow, I'll need precisely 131 CC.

For reference, here's my shopping list.

Shopping List

2 Potions, 10 CC (Basic Healing item, helps endurance of the team a lot)
2 Super Potions, 16 CC (See Potions, but this is for more serious wounds)
2 Ethers, 10 CC (Prevents Energy from running out. Chill is essentially suicidal because if you're not damaging the encounter, you are spending more turns in that encounter, which means you'll have to spend more energy and more hp to get through.)
1 Elixir, 10 CC (Like the Ethers, but affects the whole team. Good after a particularly long battle
2 Revives, 20 CC (Eventually, one of the encounters, particularly a long slog like Windswept Meadow, is going to wear your team to death. This is the only way to keep that from happening.)
30 Sport Balls, 30 CC (Essential, and about the only type of ball in existence that can "reliably" capture a legendary)
10 Heal Balls, 10 CC (Essential to grabbing minions along the way to not only act as meat shields, but also the one of the only things making a failed run not completely worthless. You'd get counters for your Pokes faster via the Hall)
20 Fast Balls, 20 CC (No comment on why I'm using a Fast Ball particularly, but basically my best shot for a 3x ball)
5 Charti Berries, 5 CC (Part of a strategy to put the stop on an early Rock Slide Pokemon)

-Second, the referees. The main issue here is that you're not fighting newbies, you're fighting the best of the best players in ASB in several different encounters where their Pokemon heal to full but yours don't between battles. We're talking people like IAR and Engineer here. In fact, it's explicitly stated that you cannot referee a TLR unless your level of skill goes between good-great. Because of this, the only players that have any remote chance of winning are, ironically, the refs, who get the advantage of the full data and are good players to begin with.

Sadly, I have rather few suggestions as to how to fix this. The best solution I can come up with is to have all currently alive Pokemon heal to full after an encounter, thus negating the need for so much CC, and making the field a bit more even. Unfortunately, this has the problem of making it way too easy.

- Are all the TLR as difficult as they're intended too? Does the info gap between MC/TT and the other TLRs constitute a serious bump in the road for the attendance of other TLRs? What info do we actually need to keep secret, and why?

Hmm...I've noticed in my time that TLRs, by their nature, are info dependent roleplays with a serious problem. I can fairly easily liken it to a raid. In The Raid Zone, a player that doesn't pay attention to past battles with a boss and for the most part disregards the boss, will meet a swift and certain end. The Legend Run is very similar, if you take the wrong Pokemon to a TLR and don't have a knowledge of the dungeon, then you will probably run into a brick wall, either by an untimely burn or simply triggering too many traps. Here's the kicker though: In raids, there's only one or two encounters (barring SotoG), and upon beating one, you get fully healed, while in a TLR, there's at least three, and probably more that are dependent purely upon RNG, AND any damage you sustain is carried over to the next unlucky encounter, which means a full and total scout is almost completely impossible!

That said, there is certainly some info we need to keep secret. From what I've seen, TLR's tend to have a "path of least resistance" if you will, the one least likely to spring death upon you. If we post all of the info on TLR's that we have, then the adventure part becomes mostly moot.

Based on this, I would personally say the best course of action would be to release the full info on Pokemon (sans probably the legendary), their type (Nest, Trap, etc), and possibly their movepools. Not only does this allow the adventures to still have meaning, it would allow people to actually prepare ahead of time their teams and such.

- Are all the aspects of TLR's difficulty equally important to us? Are all they wanted, or are some a byproduct of changeable policies? Can/should some of these factors be weakened to provide a more enjoyable/accessible experience?

TLR's are a bit tricky as far as their difficulty goes. On the one hand, they are supposed to be the hardest thing in ASB by a fairly wide margin, simply because the reward is so amazing, the capture of a legendary Pokemon. On the other hand though, what we have right now...in my opinion, is far more luck based than skill based.

The difficulty can be broken up into three key aspects:

• Dungeon: This basically defines the dungeon itself. How likely are you to run into a Pokemon per RP event? How debilitating are bad/unlucky choices for the challenger? Etc.
• Pokemon: The Pokemon found within the dungeon are also a factor. How many moves are each Pokemon given? How many Pokemon are there? Etc.
• Referee: This defines how good the referees are. Possibly the most difficult part of the TLR in general.

Now, unless we go with an AI system like zarator, there's not exactly a whole lot we can do about referees without opening it up to everyone and making horrible refs desirable. Thus our attention turns to the Pokemon and the Dungeon. The Pokemon, I feel is pretty much fine where it is. Some may disagree with me on that, but simply put we need quite a bit of difficulty on these TLRs so we don't see something crazy like Lugia flying around everywhere. The only real change I'd suggest there is that we raise the capture rate of legendaries to give a slightly less ludicrous chance of actually capturing the darn thing. The reason I suggest this is because every legendary isn't fought by itself and given a balanced movepool like the games, it's fought with one or two strong cohorts and a full or very close to full movepool for both of them. The Dungeon...could use a little bit of fixing I think. As it stands, the RP events are mostly either luck based, or completely pointless. To that end, I want to give a few examples to you guys. I don't want to give any specific examples, simply because I don't want to step on the toes of the other refs (though something tells me I'll grab the ire of a few anyways), but I can make a few things up to get across the sillyness of some of the events.

Lava Stream

Oh no, after some time walking, you see the exit to the cave...across a river of lava! There appears to be only two ways across, either the bridge to your left, or some precarious rocks to the right. Do you:

A)Take the Bridge

90%: You make it across safely
10%: You slip and fall into the river of lava. You and your Pokemon are burned and take 10 Damage

B)Take the Rocks

90%: You fall into a nearby tarpit, while a Heatmor traps one of your pokemon
10%: You make it across

Now, this I think is all right to an extent, as it provides a "correct" answer while making one who knows the path still have a chance of something bad happening.

Unfortunately, then there's the Ubers Version.

Great Tree

You find yourself at a giant tree. Do you:

A) Take the Left Path

Congratulations! Vileplume just trapped your Pokemon with a Petal Dance.

B) Take the Right Path

Congratulations! Bellossom just trapped your Pokemon with a Petal Dance.

C) Go into the tree

Dead End, pick one of the other options please.

Yeah...I don't think I need to explain just how whacked this is. I feel like there is a healthy medium between making sure the roleplays are fair, but still provide some challenge. So how about I make some edits to make them a bit better.

Lava Stream

Oh no, after some time walking, you see the exit to the cave...across a river of lava! There appears to be only two ways across, either the bridge to your left, or some precarious rocks to the right. However, out of the corner of your eye, you see several glowing objects on top of the rocks. Do you:

A) Take the Bridge

You make it across safely, but your Pokemon took a small amount of damage from the heat exhaustion.

B) Climb the Rocks

65%: You climb up the rocks, but it looks like the shiny objects was the storage spot...and nest, of a Honchkrow! It traps one of your Pokemon
25%: You climb up the rocks, and you find three common items along the way, but your Pokemon have spent a little energy
10%: Lucky you! You've found a rare item.

I find this to be a bit better, simply because it gives a small penalty for the truly safe option, but if you go for the riskier option, you might find a better reward, but naturally the risk is pretty high that something will go badly.

Great Tree

You find yourself at a giant tree. However, before you are a Vileplume on the left path, and a Bellossom on the right. It looks like you'll need to fight one to continue. Do You:

A) Go Left

Start one on one Encounter with Vileplume. Maybe a small chance of getting trapped.

B) Go Right

Start one on one Encounter with Bellossom. Maybe a small chance of getting trapped.

C) Go into the tree

You find an item
95%: Dead end, pick one of the other two options
5%: Secret passage!

This one is a bit better because it actually lets the player choose a bit of their poison, and still allows the very difficult referee to alter his strategy dependent upon which one is chosen. To this end I'd like to see roleplays transpire more like this. The best option to make things more accessible difficulty wise is to weaken the Dungeon just a little bit.

- Last, but not least: what are our thoughts on legendary Pokemon in ASB? What's the role we intend to see them assuming? How common/rare should they be? How much accessible should they be? Are they intended for Gym challenges? Tournaments? RPs? How beneficial/threatening can legends be to the ASB's environment? What have been the impact of currently caught legends on ASB so far?

Here's where I think most people will agree with me. A legendary should be particularly rare, given only to those with a clear head, great strategy, and quick wit. As far as their role goes, I feel like we might need a separate roleplay to give them more of a use, but for now we can say that they can be a great trump card in a standard battle, an above average member of the team for other roleplays (such as raids), and bragging rights.

As for the rest, I'll try to give a concise opinion on them. Gyms are probably the most controversial because they're already quite difficult to beat, and certain types (notably Dragon) could become near impossible after enough legends are caught. On the other hand, a single legendary on either side could spice things up. For that reason, I'd suggest a limit of one legendary per team. In fact, I think the one legendary per team would be a good rule for general use too.

Tournaments are a different matter, and I'd probably ban legendaries from there. The reason being because tournaments are supposed to be a matter of skill, so why give the already brilliant trainers an even bigger advantage?

Roleplays are more of a case by case basis. Some, like raids, already stack the odds pretty heavily against you, so that really helps. Things like the battle hall never see legendaries because they're put in an area where they fight other legends of not necessarily equal position. I have no real opinion on it.

Before I can address how beneficial/threatening the legends are, I need to say a few things. First, legends in ASB are almost non-existant, and those who currently have legends hardly ever use them. Second, legendaries should be carefully monitored, I can't really give you a decent picture of ASB when legends are involved, so we should carefully look at what effect legendaries are having when they become more widespread. With that in mind, I think they are mostly beneficial, but we need to make sure they are rare so that they are not the only things out there.

- The Legend Run is, arguably, the least challenged Roleplay among all the Roleplay with a comparable lifespan. The amount of issued challenges is abysmally small, and the win/loss ratio is even smaller.

So, to conclude, I think we need quite a few changes to our legendary system if we ever want to see the effects of them on the ASB metagame, or if we want to see them at all for that matter. Here's just a quick summary of the changes I would like to see.

One of:

• Dungeons fitting more of the outline above
• An AI system for TLRs to make them less about referee skill.
• Releasing full Pokemon sheets for all TLRs
• Raise the capture rate of legendaries very slightly.

All of:

• Costs need to be reduced drastically
• One legendary per battle rule implemented
• Tournament banning of legendaries
• Some codification as to what a new TLR can or cannot have
• Raise the capture rate of legendaries very slightly

So there you have it, that's my spiel on that.

 

[Objection]

3) The Legend Run is extremely luck based: The kind of influence RNG has over TLRs is ridiculous. There's a lot of events which are completely RNG based. In 30-50 rounds of battling, RNG ends up mattering a lot - especially because unlike raids, your chances to minimize hax are much lower against a human opponent who doesn't just attack like raid bosses. And finally, catching a legendary is EXTREMELY luck based. Even in the nearly impossible situation that you got the legendary to 1% HP and sleeping, you're looking to a 22ish % catch chance (half the time, because Sports Ball). But we're talking about Pokemon with skyhigh stats, full movepools (including shit like Rest), and cruel arenas on your side. Unless your ref is particularly bad or unlucky, your chances to lock a legendary into such "favourable" odds are slim... in which case you're looking at 10% or so chances to catch, if not less.

-First, the counter cost. This is probably THE biggest hurdle in any Roleplay, because TLR's, if you want a good chance at them, require a ludicrous CC cost. To put down an example, after much thought and effort, I've come to the conclusion that to make a viable challenge towards the Windswept Meadow, I'll need precisely 131 CC.

For reference, here's my shopping list.

*Hide tags removed due to issues with hide tags inside quote tags*
2 Potions, 10 CC (Basic Healing item, helps endurance of the team a lot)
2 Super Potions, 16 CC (See Potions, but this is for more serious wounds)
2 Ethers, 10 CC (Prevents Energy from running out. Chill is essentially suicidal because if you're not damaging the encounter, you are spending more turns in that encounter, which means you'll have to spend more energy and more hp to get through.)
1 Elixir, 10 CC (Like the Ethers, but affects the whole team. Good after a particularly long battle
2 Revives, 20 CC (Eventually, one of the encounters, particularly a long slog like Windswept Meadow, is going to wear your team to death. This is the only way to keep that from happening.)
30 Sport Balls, 30 CC (Essential, and about the only type of ball in existence that can "reliably" capture a legendary)
10 Heal Balls, 10 CC (Essential to grabbing minions along the way to not only act as meat shields, but also the one of the only things making a failed run not completely worthless. You'd get counters for your Pokes faster via the Hall)
20 Fast Balls, 20 CC (No comment on why I'm using a Fast Ball particularly, but basically my best shot for a 3x ball)
5 Charti Berries, 5 CC (Part of a strategy to put the stop on an early Rock Slide Pokemon)

I would like to suggest a possible (maybe partial) solution to this.

When it comes to capture mechanics, we take in-game precedence and shove it up Game Freak's backside. Instead, we go with a system that is not based on probability. Because seriously, relying on 10% chances is the mark of the desperate, and the idea that doing so might be the best - in fact, the only - way to achieve victory in a TLR makes it simply not worth it. Even if the probability does eventually skew in the player's favour, how many rounds is that going to take?

Suppose that each Pokemon has a Capture Counter (I'm calling it this for now, but if we can find another term that doesn't abbreviate to an abbreviation we already have, that'd be great). This Capture Counter would start at, say, 100 for the minions you encounter in a TLR and some higher value (200? 300? Even more?) for the legendaries. Every time a Poke Ball is thrown at a Pokemon, its Capture Counter is reduced by an amount equal to the probability that would be calculated by ASB's capture formula (or Onion_Bubs' !catch script). Once the Capture Counter reaches 0, the Pokemon is caught. For example:

<%Objection> !catch 45 100 10 sport paralysis
-Onion_Bubs- You have either a 24.610677% chance or a 98.438802% chance of capturing that pokemon.

(OK, maybe we should round off to 2 decimal places or something.)

This means that, if a Sport Ball were to be thrown at a paralysed Pokemon with a catch rate of 45 and 10 HP out of 100 remaining, it would reduce the Pokemon's Capture Counter by ~24.6 if a previous ball was not thrown, or ~98.4 if one was. If the Pokemon's Capture Counter started at 100, it would be caught for sure if you threw virtually any other ball followed by a Sport Ball at it. If it were considerably higher, it would take multiple rounds of this to capture the Pokemon, but you would at least be able to know exactly how many balls you would need. How does this help what Maxim pointed out? It means you can plan ahead - you can work out how many balls of which kinds you will need in advance, and thus will not have to spend excess CC preparing for a luckfuck. And the next time you use the !catch script, you'll get something like this:

<%Objection> !catch 45 100 10 sport paralysis
-Onion_Bubs- You will deal either 24.610677 or 98.438802 damage to that pokemon's capture counter.

Note that the initial Capture Counters can certainly be adjusted if 100 is too low. This is more to get the general idea across. Instead of a combination of wearing the Pokemon down and rolling the dice, capture becomes a more predictable combination of wearing it down and wearing it down.

 

[Eternal Drifter]

Related questions:
- Is there a problem with TLR's accessibility? Could TLR be made more accessible without reducing the amount of skill required to complete it?
- Are all the TLR as difficult as they're intended too? Does the info gap between MC/TT and the other TLRs constitute a serious bump in the road for the attendance of other TLRs? What info do we actually need to keep secret, and why?
- Are all the aspects of TLR's difficulty equally important to us? Are all they wanted, or are some a byproduct of changeable policies? Can/should some of these factors be weakened to provide a more enjoyable/accessible experience?
- Last, but not least: what are our thoughts on legendary Pokemon in ASB? What's the role we intend to see them assuming? How common/rare should they be? How much accessible should they be? Are they intended for Gym challenges? Tournaments? RPs? How beneficial/threatening can legends be to the ASB's environment? What have been the impact of currently caught legends on ASB so far?

I can offer my thoughts for all these questions, save for most of the last point.

- Is there a problem with TLR's accessibility? Could TLR be made more accessible without reducing the amount of skill required to complete it?

Shortly before the shift, there were a few bumps for TLR accessibility other than what zarator mentioned (community based):

• Lack of willing (and able) refs. There were a total of 20 refs on the ref list, seven of which were labeled inactive refs, leaving us with 13. BUT those avaliable refs were down by several because they didn't take challenges. Furthermore, those that did take challenges generally took only one or two at a time to prevent from being overwhelmed.
• Desire for legendaries. Let's face it: we all desire power of some sort, and Legendaries give some part of that power. This brings a lot of players towards TLRs, even those that are unprepared for it. This builds towards one of my later points.
• TLR locking. This was one of the key points that limited accessibility; it was the last RP that locked Poke'mon, preventing them from being used elsewhere in ASB (I know personally, since I was stuck with it locking my Audino and Scrafty for four months before I could join ASB itself). Two months before the hack, this part was finally dropped, so it no longer relates presently. But it should explain why challenges were few until that point.
• Points One and Two of this list build to this point: the queue. Once the locks were dropped, the queue exploded in size until the hack. People wanted powerful legendaries, and not enough refs were clearing pieces of the queue fast enough. (Admittedly, I was part of the problem. After my TLR Mysterious Cove entrance, no one wanted to suffer another stall-fest. Dogfish44 eventually took care of it.)

These community points are compounded by several others:

• Information: knowing is half the battle, and having access to all the information for TLRs tends to make things easier. Such information was either exclusively in the hands of refs or in past TLRs, forcing non-ref potentials to go through the forum to double check things. If one had no access to such information, congratulations: ASB will be greatful for your scouting attempt, and here's to hoping you get as far as possible!
• The costs: unless funds are tight, you feel lucky, or you have a plan, you will have to pay for supplies to deal with the problems you will inevitably have to face. You can get by with just 3 CC for 5 Poke'balls, but your odds of catching your prize will be VERY LOW compared to others. It's generally a good idea to pay for the more powerful Ultra Balls and specialized Poke'balls to increase your odds of success, and then on medicines to make sure you stay up long enough to get to the Legend. This preperation forces people to have to pay through the nose.
• The refs: This dabbles with the community accessibilities, but for a very good reason. There were about three (of the 20 total!) refs that managed to lower the size of the queue, but there comes a problem: dogfish44, Engineer Pikachu, and Its_A_Random are VERY good ASB players. I don't think I'm exagerating (too much) when I say that when one of these three enter the battlefield, the success rate of their opponent quickly plumets towards zero. They're just that good. And if you have to face them again and again with continually weakened Pokemon and they get fresh ones each time, that zero will come sooner. We could get more refs, but Deck's high standards essentially REQUIRE potentials to be AS GOOD AS those three. Essentially, unless standards are lowered (or one gets VERY lucky), only these three will be getting Legendary Pokemon. (Against me, you'll likely win; its just a matter of your condition at the end of the battle, whether low on health or energy. Against them... expect KOes.)
• Time: As stated, TLRs are time consuming. Just ask Dummy007. Or, rather, considering my run and zarator's run against him, don't. Just take our word for it. 30 to 50 rounds for a single run... even raids are faster (usually).
• Difficulty: On TOP of the refs, there is the general difficulty of TLRs, especially those appearing after Timeless Tower. A good example can be seen in The Wanderer's Windswept Meadow TLR. He managed to get over to the Legend, but due to the difficulty of the TLR, he was in no shape to get it. This is made far more difficult for the TLRs appearing after Timeless Tower. Why? Because we know almost every part of the tower's dungeons, because we've gone through them so many times! We can't say the same for later TLRs, because we don't have the information!

All of that makes TLRs only good for those seeking additional counters, are skilled enough to actually BE TLR refs, are lucky, desperate, and/or insane.

A quick way to fix this would be to put in a few extra refs that are not truely good battlers, but that would sharply decline the difficulty so much that legends would become VERY commonplace, and there is no guarentee that they'd do their job correctly. Furthermore, Deck would have a fit (and likely ban me for proposing the idea in the first place).

A better way to fix this would be to reveal all information relating to TLRs, but, as Maxim said, that would take the adventure out of it. (If it comes to that to even just revive the TLRs, I'm for it, though. See my Data Recreation Project proposal.) His recommendation to post the movepools of all the Poke'mon so people can prepare for the Poke'mon in the TLRs.

Based on this, I would personally say the best course of action would be to release the full info on Pokemon (sans probably the legendary), their type (Nest, Trap, etc), and possibly their movepools. Not only does this allow the adventures to still have meaning, it would allow people to actually prepare ahead of time their teams and such.

There is already a thread here that can help us get started. We'll have to reorganize things to attach specific Pokemon to specific TLRs, and complete their needed movepools, but this provides a much needed start. However, I suggest one step further: create the movepools of the legends, but only provide information on their abilities, stats, and movepools of moves up to level 25. And then add a note to that information that the legend may know moves other than the ones listed, but those listed are the ones that the legend are guaranteed to know.

- Are all the TLR as difficult as they're intended too? Does the info gap between MC/TT and the other TLRs constitute a serious bump in the road for the attendance of other TLRs? What info do we actually need to keep secret, and why?

I'd say the TLRs are a little too difficult for people to truely have a good chance at the legend. They have a chance, but considering the overall difficulty (refs and built-in), its close to zero. But the info gap is the primary reason there were not many challenges in the later TLRs. I do not think much information needs to be kept secret, though, for TLRs to function. If you want it to be an adventure, though, then some information needs to be kept secret; just not the Poke'mon, I'd say (we need to give SOME information out).

- Are all the aspects of TLR's difficulty equally important to us? Are all they wanted, or are some a byproduct of changeable policies? Can/should some of these factors be weakened to provide a more enjoyable/accessible experience?

I think that some aspects of TLR's difficulty matter more than others. We can't exactly do anything about the ref issue, but I believe we can change the difficulty to be easier. The primary change could be related to the catching mechanics. I like the idea of each Poke'ball having an easier time catching a Pokemon than the last ball, but there needs to be a cap, I believe. Then again, if there's no cap, if you have CC to burn, you could gain the Legend eventually...

In short, a possible revision to the catching system, but we'd need to test it elsewhere before we can bring it into TLRs.

Also:

16:42 IAR
also one quick easy fix to tlrs that I might suggest to those looking for something to reduce the difficulty
16:42 IAR
Two subs at all encounters
16:42 IAR
honestly... >_<
16:43 IAR
one sub for the challengers until the boss is kinda dumb

- Last, but not least: what are our thoughts on legendary Pokemon in ASB? What's the role we intend to see them assuming? How common/rare should they be? How much accessible should they be? Are they intended for Gym challenges? Tournaments? RPs? How beneficial/threatening can legends be to the ASB's environment? What have been the impact of currently caught legends on ASB so far?

The impact of currently caught legends has been small, so I can't tell you much else. They may be common in the OU, Uber, and other metagames, but they are scarse here. There's only 22 of them right now. Limiting use in battles might be an interesting idea, but, regrettably, it cuts into story potential (Itsumo leading the three Regis into battle, for example), and for me, the story is the big thing. If I get a hold of a legend, I hope to make them take an important role in my stories.

 

[Gerard]

A few things that I see normally mean the death of anyone facing TLRs

- Subs: or more appropriately lack of, as said before 1 sub against FEs mons with 30+ moves it's impossible to use properly, 1 sub doesn't even prevents the opponent from avoiding your attacks in some form for the action, even worst is we know nothing about this pokemon, we don't even know their moves so how are we supposed to sub against this kind of treats? even worst maybe you do but there are always moves that you can't be sure they've got until they actually use them, so you may even sub for a move that's not even on their movepool! Most battles use 2 subs for a reason, one of the hardest RPs shoudln't force you to use just 1.

- Luck: There are just way to many stuff that's controlled by the RNG, it's puzzling how when people have said time and time again how ASB tries to minimize luck based events over skill & player choices this has little effect on most TLRs in which even getting the legend is potentially impossible if the player is unlucky enough, not to mention the random encounters, traps and every other secondary effect that could have a mayor effect over the course of the run

- Combos: Even if you have a first stage pokemon with pathetic stats that helping hand explosion is gonna hurt, A LOT! I think it would be easier if some of the challengers had their ability to use combination removed, if only the little guys, since every time you're ordering second you open yourself to getting KOed by some dumb combo, it's not like we refs care about the lackeys, or the guardians, or the random encounters, they're red shirts & pawns of the queen, which is the only one we care about so them killing themselves from energy exhaustion or just getting all worked up A1 is not something we care about.

 

[Engineer Pikachu]

- Mysterious Cove has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011 (i.e. 1 year and 8 months): ever since, 5 people obtained a Phione out of 24 people attempting it.
- Ice Spire has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011: ever since, 5 people obtained a Regice out of 23 people attempting it
- Rock Crag has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011: ever since, 7 people obtained Regirock out of 19 people attempting
- Iron Dungeon has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011: ever since, 5 people obtained Registeel out of 17 people attempting
- Heaven's Ascent has been opened since Sep 10th, 2011 (although it requires the above three raids to be completed before entering): ever since, 2 people tried and none succeeded
- Black Sulphur Caldera has been opened since Jan 31st, 2012 (1 year and 4 months): ever since, 8 people tried and none succeeded
- Windswept Meadow has been opened since May 11th, 2012 (1 year): ever since, 6 people tried and none succeeded
- Glacial Cave has been opened since Sep 30th, 2012 (8 months): ever since, 2 people tried and none succeeded
- Ruined Eden has been opened since Nov 10th, 2012 (6 months ago): ever since, 4 people tried and none succeeded
- Four Swords Quest has been opened since Apr 21st, 2013 (20 days): ever since, none tried it.

1) Mysterious Cove really doesn't have the difficulty level it should have
2) Something is wrong with the TLRs released past Timeless Tower

First, I know that Pwnemon got to the boss of one of the FSQ dungeons, so it's not quite a "nobody challenged it" kind of thing.

I'd also like to point out that using probability of success as a way to determine difficulty doesn't quite work here, for two reasons off the top of my head.

1. New players are more likely to head to MC. It's labeled "Beginner" or "Training" (or something else with that connotation), while everything else is labeled "Legendary" or "Uber." If you're a new player, you're going to be heading for the easier one, since it's near impossible for you to get to the end of the other ones, let alone catch the legend. example: ED.
2. Not all players entered prepared. In fact, the majority of runs aren't even serious; often, trainers bring a paltry five Pokeballs (or even none!) with them, and only those seriously gunning for the legendary even stock up on healing items. Let's be honest; when you're fighting several 3v2 fights against weak, unevolved Pokemon, you're getting counters fast. If you're not sure you can get to the end of the dungeon (or if it hasn't been mapped out well), you're not going to want to waste counters on the run. The rewards from battling and the uncertainty of getting the legendary incentivize dungeon runs that aren't serious. I'm not harping on "scouting runs," just hoping that people that actually head into TLRs go in with the purpose of catching the legend.

Given those two reasons, you can't really just use success rate, but I will concede that MC is pretty difficult due to the sheer number of encounters right now (also the Magikarp encounter).

Why is TLR so inaccessible?

At the risk of sounding elitist, I'm just going to put this out there: unlike all other RPs, TLR is not an RP that you can simply jump into. For you to actually stand a chance, you need to have raised both CC and your Pokemon. It is true that the ones we've made have become progressively harder, but that's only natural as the Legends we put out there get better as well; honestly, if somebody can catch the Legend on the first couple collective runs without extraordinary luck and flawless play (nigh impossible), we haven't made it hard enough. As someone who has been working on TLRs, I can tell you that our philosophy is essentially "err on the difficult side, and if it's too impossible you can tone it down." I've personally been constantly making changes to WM, editing arenas, movepools, RPs, etc., and there's only been one change that adds to difficulty.

RE time and counter consuming: It's going to take time to get to the end, and it's going to take a lot of counters unless you happen to be an excellent battler. If any of those two assumptions are wrong, something is off.
RE luck: I will agree that this is a highly important factor in a TLR that probably needs to be reduced in some way.
RE info sensitive: Unlike your raids, we don't want a TLR to be easily mapped out. We want every run to be different, whether it's the RPs encountered or the order in which you encounter them (preferably both); in fact, the main reason we take so long on them is because we're adding different RPs so every run isn't identical. This does give TLR referees an indisputable edge when they go for a run themselves, but there's really no way around that.

onto questions this seems like a free response test

- Is there a problem with TLR's accessibility? Could TLR be made more accessible without reducing the amount of skill required to complete it?

I don't see an issue with accessibility; it's meant for those that have played for a longer time. I do, however, like Objection's suggestion, though personally it seems a bit too mechanical and not interesting enough. One alternative to the catch formula that I would support is a combination of those two, where perhaps your capture chance goes up as the number of Pokeballs you've thrown increases.

- Are all the TLRs as difficult as they're intended to? Does the info gap between MC/TT and the other TLRs constitute a serious bump in the road for the attendance of other TLRs? What info do we actually need to keep secret, and why?

The difficulty header for MC is misleading. It's not as hard as the other TLRs (from my experience, anyway) but it's still pretty difficult. Other than that, it's all pretty much accurate. The info gap between the two sets of TLRs does sort of dissuade people from heading to the newer ones, but eventually runs in the second set will migrate over to the first set, because somebody's going to challenge from time to time.

I'll argue that we need to keep secret everything we previously kept confidential. There's just no fun in releasing RP data to everyone, as a TLR referee, a TLR player, and a TLR creator. I want to laugh as people make choices that potentially kill them. I want that suspense from not knowing what comes next (unfortunately I don't get that anymore). I want people to explore and probe their way through the dungeon.

- Last, but not least: what are our thoughts on legendary Pokemon in ASB? What's the role we intend to see them assuming? How common/rare should they be? How much accessible should they be? Are they intended for Gym challenges? Tournaments? RPs? How beneficial/threatening can legends be to the ASB's environment? What have been the impact of currently caught legends on ASB so far?

They should be rare and pretty difficult to get; I see having Legends as a symbol of your success – a trophy of sorts. I'm of the opinion that if you've managed to capture a legend, it's yours to use and its use shouldn't be overly restricted; however, that's only because the current released legensd aren't particularly overpowering. I might revise that opinion if Arceus were running rampant.

There's another large problem in TLRs that I'd like to talk about: choosing the path of least risk. Instead of being an forward-moving, explorative RP as it was originally designed to, TLR has sort of devolved into slugging through battles, and choosing the least risky options at every RP, which leads to pretty boring runs. In fact, my reason for making RPs harder in general is solely because nobody even bothers trying another option if they know there's one option that gives a decent chance at success. How might we fix this? I have an idea or two but I'd like to hear everyone else's first.

Lastly, for my own benefit...

SUGGESTIONS THAT I LIKE
- Substitutions: Having only one sub in Doubles+ kind of sucks. I fully support changing that to two.
- Capture formula change: Noted somewhere above.

SUGGESTIONS THAT I DON'T LIKE
- Release data: no.
- Posting Pokemon list: I like the idea of not having to compile movepools all over again, but I heavily dislike the idea of being able to assemble a "checklist" team – simply checking if your team is able to deal with every Pokemon in that list.

 

[zarator]

A lot of you guys have made really good points, so allow me to comments on some of those.

About substitutions: There's not much else to say here, in that I pretty much I agree with everyone that we should have two subs, not just one.

About refs: Many people mentioned referees as an additional layer of difficulty. But as E_D pointed out, there's nothing we can do about it. Either we use both good and bad refs, causing people to require the luck to meet the right (bad) ref to catch the legend - or we ask Engineer, Dogfish, IAR, etc to smoke some Dream Dust before reffing TLR. Neither of the three seem to like Musharna enough, so I'd rule this out.

Luck and paths: Some people pointed out that an inevitable aspect of TLR's luck reliance are path choices, since they have to be RNG based. I personally think that is not the case, and that it has been a mistake to make them in a way that affects risk. I'll try to explain why with an example from raids.

When I first devised raids, I had been tempted to implement true loot tables for bosses, WoW style: basically, to have bosses drop one item, randomly chosen out of a list of four/six. However, I eventually decided against it because, ultimately, I didn't want people's efforts to be thwarted by sheer luck after months of raiding.
For example, at the moment Eye of the Storm can drop two artifacts. One is called Ashes of the Phoenix God while the other is called Beacon of the Argent Night. The former is tailored for Fire-type healers (such as Ninetales, Chandelure, Magcargo, etc), while the latter is tailored for Psychic-type healers (such as Slowking, Gardevoir, Gallade, etc). I could have made each artifact have a 50% chance to drop, but instead I decided to make them path-dependant (if Ho-Oh is killed last, Ashes drop. If Lugia is killed last, Beacon drops). Why? Let's say someone is preparing for Raging Shore Hard Mode. That raid requires a significant investment on Fire-types, and Ninetales is nearly a must. On the contrary, Psychic types are nearly useless because Syclant (the boss of that raid) eats them alive. So, our unlikely hero ventures into Eye of the Storm to get the Ashes... just to be screwed after two months of raiding by a 50% roll and be stuck with the Beacon. Should he spend another two months again, he may still be fucked up the same way. As you see, it can quickly get awfully frustrating, so instead I gave players a choice instead of a dice - should they decide to down Ho-Oh last, they're guaranteed to get what they need.
In the same vein, I think TLR paths should not revolve about "guessing right", but about "making your choice". What does it mean? There are two options, mostly:
- A path choice may require the player to choose between high risk/high reward vs low risk/low reward. Like, one path may have a dangerous trap but, should they survive, they get something like a Max Revive. The other, on the contrary, rewards nothing but only sports a minor challenge, such as a weak nest or a side effect (like those cheesy "everyone takes 10 damage")
- A path choice may simply require the player to choose between roughly equal but different challenges. For example, one path may lead one of your Pokemon to be trapped by a Dragonair, while the other leads to a Hydreigon rare encounter. Dragonair is weaker, but you don't get to choose which Pokemon to face it with. Meanwhile, you can decide how to match up against Hydreigon, but the latter is a fucking beast compared to Dragonair.
As you can see, in both cases what happens is not luck-based - the player decides its own fate. Yet, the player is faced with a real choice, in that no alternative is inherently better. He'll have to look at his current team and, on that basis, choose which path is best for him. It could be even possible to make some paths still RNG based, but only among equal choices (ex: Dragonair trap vs Charmeleon trap, 10 dmg on everyone vs -15 energy to a random Pokemon, Jynx trap + Max Revive vs Lapras rare encounter + Elixir, stuff like that). There should NOT be any case like, say, Weavile trap vs no encounter + Super Potion! People's good fate should be a direct result of their choices, not decided by a dumb RNG score. Do we want to reward skill or not, here?

About Objection's catch method: I'm on the fence, but it's a good proposal. If anything because it's the only one so far which actually cuts down the luck reliance without removing the entire catching mechanism.

About combos: Given that most battles are two-order battles since it's triples, I think it wouldn't hurt us to just say neither the referee nor the challenger can use combos. They're too disruptive, and in most cases, they hurt the challengers the most.

About TLR's inaccessibility: It is hard to prove Engineer Pikachu wrong when he says that TLRs ARE intended to be hard. However, I think even he has to realizes that we may have pushed things a bit too far. Frankly, I believe that even the hardest challenge around should not take more than a year to be defeated assuming enough people attempt it. And if there's an abnormally low amount of people challenging, then it means that something with the system is wrong.

Allow me to make some examples taken from World of Warcraft. At the end of Vanilla (patch 1.13 or so), the hardest dungeon - Naxxramas - had been released. However, developers soon realized the issue: there were too few people who could veritably attempt that raid. In order to get into Naxxramas, people required to have farmed Temple of Ahn'Qiraji first (at least 4-6 months of farming to get the right gear). But in order to face Temple of Ahn'Qiraji, you needed gear from Blackwing Lair (another 4-6 months of farming). And in order to get into Blackwing Lair, you needed gear from Molten Core and Onyxia... you can see the pattern. Unless by the time Naxx was released you already had the gear, it would've taken people no less than 1 year to even be geared enough to try it... and this is assuming they could count on a stable core for all that time. 40 people who devote 1 year to farm those raids in preparation for Naxxramas. Needless to say, Naxx turned out to be a fiasco, and Blizzard made sure this would have never happened again. In all the further expansions, mechanisms had been introduced to allow people to get better gear more easily in later patches, so that the hardest raids of each expansion (Sunwell Plateau, Icecrown Citadel, etc) didn't require to go through all the raid progression.

I foresaw a similar system for my raids too. The time I released an expansion after Isle of Lost Relics, I'd have had Stormrage Mountain bosses start dropping Badges of Valor, in order to allow players to buy artifacts more easily - the next expansion, in fact, would have required Isle of Lost Relics artifacts for success. With this system implemented, even newer player could stand a realistic chance to try new raids, without going through over a year of raiding... just to get ready!

Back to TLR. While I fully agree with people in that TLR should be hard... I don't think it should also be time consuming to this point. I don't know if we should reduce the number of encounters, or something to that extent. But the current TLRs are frankly too long. People, in my opinion, should not have to devote one year to catch a legend.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stuff which requires more reflection:

Information availability: I really do not agree with Engineer here. It is NOT unavoidable that TLR referees have such a huge advantage over everyone else, and frankly it is not even fair. If the TLRs as they are can't function without such an info gap, then they should be reworked, majorly. For example, if we implemented paths like I suggested, we'd have less incentive to keep info secretive, since the emphasis would not be on "Will you guess the easiest path?" but on "Will you make the right strategic choice?". If we REALLY want TLRs to reward skills instead of, I dunno, luck or divinatory powers, that's the way to go.

Time factor: There really hasn't been enough input here. Is there a way to make TLRs hard without turning them into 2+ months of grinding? ASB is full of hard challenges which, still, do not require people to spend this much time after a challenge. We need to work more on this point, unless some of you honestly thinks that 1+ year of scouting, dying, counterfarming etc is required to even own a single legend... in which case the very idea of each legend getting caught at least once before I become a grandfather are very slim.

Legends in ASB: So far, the only things I heard from people are:
- "They're cool, we shouldn't make them too easy to get". Easy no, reasonable over a certain timespan yes. Compare that to the Gym League. Only good to great players can actually defeat gym leaders and get badges (for the most part). But unlike TLR, it doesn't require such a long time to do, thus allowing for multiple tries without getting too old. I frankly think the Gym League is a good model for how "hard" doesn't equal "time consuming".
- "We should/shouldn't limit them in usage somehow". For Ongoing matches, we could simply divide between Standard and Ubers (all legends should prolly fit here, not just cover ones). For Gym battles, maybe 1 legend per side is fair if we really want them to be used, although this certainly deepens the gap between certain types (Psychic and Electric, for example, get a big boost, while Poison and others are either running empty or not as advantaged). For tournaments, we could ban them but, should legends become spread enough, we could also make "semi-Uber" tournaments with rules like VGC2010 (or was it 2011?), where you can use up to 2 legends out of 4 Pokemon in doubles.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tl;dr: This thread has not been made to make TLR/getting legends easier. The purpose of this thread is to see if we can reduce the amount of time/luck/counters required to get legends while retaining the same level of skill required.

 

[Stratos]

being info sensitive is bullshit because it makes tlrs 10-1000 times easier for tlr refs and the standard for being a tlr ref is totally arbitrary (i'm not trying to call anyone out or toot my own horn, but there are some tlr refs i would definitely not consider good-great and i believe i can beat pretty easily, yet when i asked to be a tlr ref i was told "you're a suspicious character" and denied)

edit: nevermind, i am gonna call subwayj out for being made a tlr ref when he NEVER PLANNED TO REF A TLR

 

[Objection]

About Objection's catch method: I'm on the fence, but it's a good proposal. If anything because it's the only one so far which actually cuts down the luck reliance without removing the entire catching mechanism.

Yeah, that was the idea. If numbers need to be tweaked, they can be tweaked. What would help is if I knew how many balls people would expect to throw before they caught a Pokemon (legendary or otherwise).

Also Pwnemon being rejected for TLR refdom is BS.

 

[Dogfish44]

This thread got awful TLDR awful fast. Still...

• TLR Ref Information Bias - This is a thing. I know some TLR refs actively refuse to look at the data of a TLR they aren't reffing and I know that I've taken less than optimal paths in my TLR to make sure I counter that bias. However, I can't expect any TLR ref to do that, so I believe some data should be made public. The most sensible thing would be to have the opposing movepools laid out clearly. I disagree with the releasing of various paths, for many reasons - however, figuring out risk/reward can often be derived from the role play itself (I wish it was more obvious in some mind, but there we go).
• TLRs will inherently be long - perhaps with more items the lower tier ones we can make those less grindy. This was talked about on IRC, and also helps fix a lot of balance issues in TLR - All backpacks default in size to the Uber Dungeon Backpack. That reduces grinding time with heal pulse etc. (More potions), and allows non-dedicated heal pulse/stall teams to work, which is what beginners are more likely to use.
• Legends in gyms etc. - As much as Zapdos would probably be more useful in my gym team than Emolga (Although both lack Hurricane ¬_¬), this ends up hugely unfair to some gyms like Poison, who have no legends to choose from. Either a one legend limit or no legends in gyms is fine - although some legends are fairly weak in comparison to others, which might have to be taken into account. As for other matches, I think a one legend limit seems reasonable.
• Capture Mechanics - I like Objection's, it's understandable, and keeps legends difficult but capturable.
• Substitutions - Please for the love of all that's holy increase the number of these. 2 at non-boss and 3 at boss is far more appropriate than 1 & 2.
• Combos - They're part of the game, but TLR refs have the advantage with them - since their units are expendable, whilst the player's aren't. I personally don't believe banning them solves anything though - if movepools are known, then you should be able to battle them, just like against any other opponent.
• Ref difficulty - This one's a doozy to fix, since it can end up very complicated very quickly. AI systems I'm against due to complexity, but there's no other good option to normalise ref difficulty.

Might post a more coherent write up later, I'll see.

 

[zarator]

Just a quick reply to Dogfish about Combos: Referees have a huge advantage because 1) they have much less concern with the high energy costs required for fueling them, 2) you need to use a fuckton of non-attacking moves in TLRs to catch Pokemon or save forces (screens, Chill, status moves, Heal Pulse, etc), so the opportunities for good use of combos are immense, and 3) Bosses always act second and regenerate energy quickly when you attempt to capture them, which makes them combo whores <.<. I'm pretty sure TLR would be a bit less unpredictable and brutal if combos were banned altogether.

Also, something which came up on IRC to reduce the length of TLRs: why don't we limit the sheer amount of encounters? Something like the following:

Lackeys -> Path-dependant encounter -> Guardians -> Path-dependant encounter -> Boss

,where path-dependant encounter can be one (ONE!) of the following, depending on the dungeon and the player's choices: Nest, trap, rare encounter, items, random dmg/energy loss, etc.

Some critics which I can see coming and that have no reason to be:
1) This would make TLRs too easy! Not really. Within five encounters, you still have plenty of space to deplete the challenger's resources with difficult fights - especially if we reduce the size of the backpack. And guess what? This would also reduce the sheer cost of undertaking a TLR - a good thing!
2) This would make TLRs too straightforward! Again, not necessarily true. If we put some real variety in the two Path-dependant encounters (from the standard a/b choice with set alternatives, to an a/b/c choice with each path having a 50% chance of alternative - yet equally difficult/benevolent - outcomes), we can still make the TLRs quite unpredictable, despite shortening the overall run.
3) This would make TLRs too quick! If you think this, this is where our points of view diverge. If you think that 30-45 days of TLRing (which is what I'm aiming for) is "too fast" intrinsically - no matter the difficulty - then we just have different positions, and I can do nothing about it. Believe me, I'd have been tempted to make 3, 4, or even 5 boss raids, but guess what? Having 6-month long runs isn't so pretty for the well-being of a RP facility. You can make good, enjoyable, difficult challenging without making them so friggin damn long! This is part of why I reworked the 3 dogs encounters in the Raid Zone (and why I swore I'd never do such a thing again). Guys, we must be realistic about this.

On a side note: open Heaven's Ascent, not just to the people who defeated the three Regis. This is part of the availability issue. An RP challenge which requires 1 year just to qualify isn't really a good challenge to begin with. Think of what I did with Eye of the Storm, opening it to everyone once Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres were beaten.

 

[Gerard]

Legends in ASB: we should differentiate between the weak legends and the strong legends, any Pokemon with a BST of 600 or less is probably fine in ASB, they are around the power level of the pseudo legends and the CAPs both of which are powerful but not broken

Look at Heatran for example, it's a powerful pokemon and it's stats are definitely amazing, but outside of that well... It's just underwhelming, it's movepool, which is pretty much the most important part of any mon in ASB is made of fire moves and a few random good moves, and it's still 4x weak to ground, it's steel STAB is just ok (and doesn't even help him that much fighting rock mons unless he's got a way to avoid Earthquake. Now compare him to Mollux, they pretty much have the same stats except Heatran has 1 more defense, Mollux is Immune to Water, has reliable recovery, Heal Pulse, Helping Hand, arguably better coverage, and works a lot better as a doubles pokemon, even his secondary STAB is better since Venoshock is a great move that works wonderfully on ASB thanks to the ability to stack status on Pokemon, but Heatran has the upper hand vs rock types, but Mollux beats the Water types that would drown Heatran, but... Heatran would fit ASB like just another powerful pokemon if anyone forgot it was a legend

The same with the Regis, Registeel is actually one of the worst steel mons, since even if he's got great defenses his base 3 offenses and complete lack of powerful moves make him just too weak in comparison to Metagross, Bronzong, Magnezone, Agrron, etc... Which, while sturdy are also strong enough that the time they gain with their resistances can be used properly to eliminate the opponent. You can see many legends are just strong pokemon but that are about the same that the Pokemon we currently have

Now the strong legends, that's a whole other story, I think that weak legends should be allowed any match a FE would, but strong legends are something you should consult your opponent, stuff like Reshiran, Mewtwo (actually Mewtwo looks tame when compared to the others), Kyogre, Groudon, etc... should not be so easily allowed into a fight since their stats, unlike those of the weaker legends, actually trump about any Pokemon in ASB, how can you beat a 120/5/4 Pokemon with 5 offenses that also has an amazing movepool with any Pokemon that's doesn't have a STAB SE move? It's just too much for any average battle and would put the battle firmly on the side of whoever brought the mon, all the 680 legends fit this like a glove, even regular kyurem with it's defensively horrible typing it's pretty scary with 5/5 offenses. On gyms I think all weak legends should be allowed but the ones that make up for half of the uber tier should be banned unless the Pokemon had an extraordinary duality that the council (the same one that determines the arenas) decided was needed in order to avoid getting crushed by some Pokemon, ex. That the Ghost Gym, because of a lack of members and a weakness to dragon type pokemon and ground type moves is allowed to use Giratina-O, so now Zarator can use Giratina, but only in it's Origin form, and he still can't use Arceus-Ghost or any other ghost (strong) legend that comes out unless pre-aproved.

A clearer example would be the Fire Gym, the leader can use Entei, Heatran and Moltres freely, but must as for permission before incorporating Reshiran or Ho-oh into his rooster, both of which must be done independently and which will require a strong justification as to why do you need such a strong legend for the job, not just because it's stronger and thus'll make easier to win matches, that's obvious, but how does that legend specifically helps you in a way that is not covered by your team already, and if that weakness isn't necessary as otherwise you'd be unbeatable, Reshiram could beat water types yes, but fire is weak to water and Mllux and Pyroak both exist to help you mitigate said weakness without having to resort to something that's too powerful against any random pokemon not just water types. It might be different on other gyms, maybe Ice does need all the help it can get, maybe Water needs Palkia to avoid being easily beaten, etc...

Branched Paths: Right now there's no such a thing as a balance between risk and reward, you beat one pokemon 1v1, you get and item that restores 10 Hp. Or 10 energy, or 3 balls (not even the good kind) or any other number of junk that would be ok to randomly find but that it's not worth sopping your health to the bottom just for a few berries

 

[Maxim]

My only issue with banning major legendaries is simply the fact of legend roles in ASB. Namely, if you ban them from gyms, what exactly are they useful for then? I can't bring them to any regular battles because my opponents probably want to have a chance to win, the Battle Hall is nearly impossible since you have a chance at facing Arceus pretty much every round, etc. So what do I actually do with a major legendary? As I see it, the only decent place I can put a legendary now is the Raid Zone, which isn't everyone's cup of tea.

 

[Pallas Athena]

I agree with pwn that the information exclusion is really odd. The already significant advantage refs enjoyed over non-refs (most are rather good players, to put it mildly) was dramatically escalated by the information gap. This is before factoring in the fact that capable battlers and refs like pwn and I were rejected or ignored (four times over the course of a year and a half in my case, never receiving an answer). This happened while there was a shortage of refs.

Beyond that, I want to look at the idea that TLR is somehow accessible to newer players.

There are more badges in ASB than legends, and the Gym League has been open for less time, and been reasonably beatable for even less. Very few people earn badges who would not be considered "good-great" by an outside observer. Compounding the badge-legend ratio is the reality that most legends are held by even fewer players, and not many have been obtained since the end of bonus play. While gyms were changed to make it easier to obtain badges, TLR went in the opposite direction. There are almost certainly more than a half dozen good-great players who could be considered worthy of a legend. Yet, this has not occurred. I do not mean to make TLRs a cakewalk, but they should not be as impossible as recent capture rates show.

I now want to turn back to the gym league. Gym challenges are effectively a minimal (1)-encounter trainer-based roleplay against a themed opponent in an advantageous arena who can be counter-teamed, but not easily, controlled by a very good "referee." Players who win receive an esteemed prize and can move on.

Shocking idea: We could make TLR like this.

I am not necessarily proposing that we remove all pre-boss fights. However, is there really a need for having more battles that stall for time when we could have a smaller number of skill-based tests against good opponents? We could even remove capture altogether: Clear the challenge and the legend joins you, like Mystery Dungeon. Capture mechanics only exist for the roleplay, so removing them would not be a major detriment to ASB as a whole.

Something like this could work for a hypothetical Darkrai TLR:

Battle 1: Triples against Hypno, Gengar, Alakazam, other sleep-based mons or dark types.

POKEMON HEALED

Battle 2: Triples against Darkrai, Toxicroak, Purugly, and/or other mons deemed suitable.

This format wouldn't require massive amounts of CC to challenge, has little more luck than a standard battle, would not take months (usually), wouldn't necessitate huge amounts of private data, and would be relatively easy to ref. With the right arenas and Pokemon, it could be hard to counter-team and difficult to win, but in a way that isn't hard to win because of a lack of information or luck. It is hard because the ref and challenges are hard in a straight-forward way you can do something about with your own skill.

A potential problem with this idea is that it would invite large amounts of challenges, as it would have a high reward and little incentive not to challenge. This could be rectified through some sort of a selection process (ie, x number of badges to enter run), a long penalty cooldown for failure, or a committee rejection of unqualified challengers. I just feel as if rather than trying to fix a system with many flaws, we could switch to one that solves most of them, if raising problems of its own.

Thoughts on ASB Legends:

They make good status symbols with more practical use than a badge. If runs are hard enough, I would be fine allowing them for almost all things. Another possibility is that we have a Legends ON/OFF clause as part of the match rules. This would allow Gym Leaders with few options to avoid being crushed by Mewtwos, while opening up players with more to use theirs, while risking being crushed by Kyogres. For gyms, this could be set as part of the arena that would require committee approval to change, lest leaders opt to change their policy depending on if the opponent has legends. But in all honesty, most of them are no more threatening than pseudo-legends or CaPs.

 

[Engineer Pikachu]

Luck and paths: Some people pointed out that an inevitable aspect of TLR's luck reliance are path choices, since they have to be RNG based. I personally think that is not the case, and that it has been a mistake to make them in a way that affects risk. I'll try to explain why with an example from raids.

<blah>

In the same vein, I think TLR paths should not revolve about "guessing right", but about "making your choice". What does it mean? There are two options, mostly:
- A path choice may require the player to choose between high risk/high reward vs low risk/low reward. Like, one path may have a dangerous trap but, should they survive, they get something like a Max Revive. The other, on the contrary, rewards nothing but only sports a minor challenge, such as a weak nest or a side effect (like those cheesy "everyone takes 10 damage")
- A path choice may simply require the player to choose between roughly equal but different challenges.

I don't think you understand. A TLR is not choosing whether you want one drop or another: it's about getting the legend at the end. When RPs of the first sort come up, about 99.99% of people will choose the path of least risk, regardless of whatever lies at the end of the other path (unless it's your "beating the trap gives you one max revive" because honestly that's a really good deal that's more like mid-risk/high reward). The second sort is already present in rather copious amounts of our RPs; if anything, we're trying to move away from Pokemon battles in RPs and do other... stuff.

Tl;dr: This thread has not been made to make TLR/getting legends easier. The purpose of this thread is to see if we can reduce the amount of time/luck/counters required to get legends while retaining the same level of skill required.

If we've reduced the time, luck, or counters required to get a legend, haven't we made TLR easier...?

Also, something which came up on IRC to reduce the length of TLRs: why don't we limit the sheer amount of encounters? Something like the following:

Lackeys -> Path-dependant encounter -> Guardians -> Path-dependant encounter -> Boss

,where path-dependant encounter can be one (ONE!) of the following, depending on the dungeon and the player's choices: Nest, trap, rare encounter, items, random dmg/energy loss, etc.

2) This would make TLRs too straightforward! Again, not necessarily true. If we put some real variety in the two Path-dependant encounters (from the standard a/b choice with set alternatives, to an a/b/c choice with each path having a 50% chance of alternative - yet equally difficult/benevolent - outcomes), we can still make the TLRs quite unpredictable, despite shortening the overall run.

I cannot disagree more with this statement. Before the XenForo shift, several players were already complaining that TLR felt like a slog through battles, with little to no actual "exploration." With a backpack of healing items, the only way to make this actually challenging would be those path-dependent encounters to be guaranteed battles, in which case the TLR would actually become a battle slugfest. Also if you claim that a TLR with 36 paths is "real variety," I would recommend that you go stick your head in the oven; I guess this is where our opinions diverge, though, since none of the active TLR referees liked the idea of having easily mapped TLRs.

 

[Deck Knight]

A few comments from the infuriating evil genius of the creator:

1. TLRs are designed to be Nintendo Hard.
I decided it would be much better to err on the side of insane difficulty, not because most legends are comparatively powerful (truthfully they are at best more balanced than other Pokemon counterparts, all of them basically having average-at-worst bulk, power, and speed), but because I ultimately viewed legends as a trophy for effort. A lot of ASB Leagues previously banned legends, and in this system legends are arguably little more than above average competitors. Luxray is on par with Raikou in many ways. Open Secret: You literally do have to catch something along the way as meat fodder to get to some of the stronger legends. The Captured Pokemon IS the Potion / Ether available each round.

2. I am not really the best at making TLR scenarios.
Going to let the truth out of the bag for the TLR refs I haven't already told this to: I really didn't have the time investment necessary to make each TLR like a compelling story adventure as I wanted. My goal was to have a very deep and rich exploration element that balanced a few fixed encounters (one low-powered, one mid-high powered plus the legendary boss) that made you feel like TLR was an epic, gruelling adventure every time. Just beating the TLR was proof enough of your skill, actually catching the legend was like a giant "I am awesome" status symbol. Eventually I farmed TLRs out to refs and contributors who could put more effort into it, since I'm really much better at creating theme Pokemon and Arenas designed to maul you in terrible, game-mechanics-exploiting ways (ever notice the early part of Glacial Cave happens to have a lot of fatmons with Weight-Based attacks AND rapids that do additional damage if knocked into them? And the Guardian combines that element with dual weathers and two heavy Pokemon? Yeah. My doing.)

3. I think most of these concerns are valid.
TLR is literally a game within a game - it's designed to take this very mathematical and precise system and combine it with encounters designed to require incredible amounts of skill to defeat, even if you are prepared to encounter the likely opponents. Our system fully integrates Arenas, Stats, Abilities, Items, even separate Weight stats - there's a LOT of nasty combinations out there. No one has ever gone through a TLR thinking "wow, this is a breeze" beyond the first or second encounter. The encounters get progressively tougher, or change up completely and trip up your Pokemon on a variety of factors. That said, I do think so much work went into making TLRs hard that some of the enjoyment got lost along the way. I never really had the time to develop the fun aspect of the TLRs to make them more than just combining the difficulty of fighting the Elite 4 with the hopeless slog of a PMD Bonus Dungeon.

Suggestions:

Open Source TLR Scenarios:

I don't want TLRs to be easily mapped. One solution to this is to have everyone know all possible RP Outcomes for a stage of TLR - but have so many possible outcomes that scouting becomes a futile effort. I want to keep the basic structure of Lackey -> RPs -> Guardian -> RPs -> Boss. This means you will have certainty in regards to which encounters you MUST prepare for (although this makes hidden arena effects difficult to keep), but other encounters will be so numerous that you just have to await the adventure the RNG sends you on in the meantime.

The fact these RPs would be open source would also prevent any individual one from being a complete luck-out, as there would be more incentive on difficult paths and less incentive on easier ones. It would also largely remove a free pass, as open source arenas that are too easy would allow your rivals just as much potential to get the easy path to the legend as you do.

Reducing the path to Scenarios rather than Fixed RP numbers.

Building om the above idea, if TLR was changed from Lackey -> RP 1 - RP 2 -> Guardian -> RP 3 -> RP 4 -> Boss to Lackey -> Scenario -> Guardian -> Scenario -> Boss, you could have scenarios with multiple phases, branching paths, or make a TLR have a fixed scenario followed by multiple branches so that it would more closely resemble the original model.

In the end I want TLR to be the ultimate challenge, but one players and refs enjoy playing until they catch the Legend, or even beyond that.

 

[zarator]

I don't think you understand. A TLR is not choosing whether you want one drop or another: it's about getting the legend at the end. When RPs of the first sort come up, about 99.99% of people will choose the path of least risk, regardless of whatever lies at the end of the other path (unless it's your "beating the trap gives you one max revive" because honestly that's a really good deal that's more like mid-risk/high reward). The second sort is already present in rather copious amounts of our RPs; if anything, we're trying to move away from Pokemon battles in RPs and do other... stuff.

If you think high risk/high reward vs low risk/low reward scenario aren't feasible because of a sort of minimax reasoning (I think you're probably right on this), then we still have a lot of options to make paths equally hard/easy yet different (even to do other... stuff, as you put it), without focusing on having paths which are inherently "better" than others.

If we've reduced the time, luck, or counters required to get a legend, haven't we made TLR easier...?

Not really. By reducing time or counters required for TLRs, we simply allow them to be challenged more often. This will obviously mean a higher number of legendaries released over a year, but the sheer difficulty (number of victories/number of challenges) may very well remain the same. If Mysterious Cove had been challenged 48 times instead of 24, and we had 10 Phione instead of 5 around, the evaluation of MC's difficulty would still be the same. It may be easier to obtain the legend over the same span of time, because you get to challenge TLR more often so you have a higher chance to get them, but that's exactly what I'm trying to do here. Because, personally, I think that an RP which takes over 18 months to be beaten once is too hard. But it may be just me.

I cannot disagree more with this statement. Before the XenForo shift, several players were already complaining that TLR felt like a slog through battles, with little to no actual "exploration." With a backpack of healing items, the only way to make this actually challenging would be those path-dependent encounters to be guaranteed battles, in which case the TLR would actually become a battle slugfest. Also if you claim that a TLR with 36 paths is "real variety," I would recommend that you go stick your head in the oven; I guess this is where our opinions diverge, though, since none of the active TLR referees liked the idea of having easily mapped TLRs.

I don't know how to understand what you're saying. If you're saying that such TLRs would be too complex because we need a higher number of encounters than five (by encounters I don't mean necessary battles - RP events will do, too), then I think it can be easily fixed. What is really time consuming about TLRs are battles, not RP events in themselves. As long as TLRs don't require you to go over seven or more fights (which would require a fuckton of rounds to go through), I'm fine adding some extra RP events for variety and enjoyment. I just don't feel we need more than 5 Pokemon Battles to get the feel of an adventure. What about you?

A few comments from the infuriating evil genius of the creator:

1. TLRs are designed to be Nintendo Hard.

Haha^^ Well, as an avid Nintendo player in my age, I fully remember the meaning of the word "hard". Yet, Nintendo hard games may have had long parts without checkpoints... but not 2 months long! Well, not if you played enough hours per day like me :p The problem is that such a concept works best if the player is allowed way more attempts per time than here. Like, in WoW raids are full of cruel, "unexpected" specials which are just made to wipe you the first time. But aside from Kyogre's Tidal Wave (which was truly a jerk of a special, I'll give you that), I tried to avoid them as much as possible because it's just cruel to wipe people's months of effort in such a cheap way. My concern with TLR is pretty much the same. They last too long to implement the kind of difficulty which generally makes up videogames. We should look elsewhere.

Suggestions:
Open Source TLR Scenarios:

This would certainly remove the advantage of referees, but I'm not sure of how to put it in practice without taking away too much of the "exploration" factor the community seems to want from TLRs. Even in raids, while the main focus is to beat the boss once you knows what he does, I still don't spoil everything in advance because the first tries always have a thrill which I don't want to kill. Then again, I had iron-hard rules for referees and raid runs which prevented this stuff from happening, so I don't know.

Reducing the path to Scenarios rather than Fixed RP numbers.

What exactly are these scenarios? Because if each scenario is made, as you put it, of "multiple phases, branching paths, or make a TLR have a fixed scenario followed by multiple branches so that it would more closely resemble the original model", aren't we just back to square one - i.e. obnoxiously long TLRs which few people feel encouraged to attempt lest lose a fuckton of counters and time for nothing?

In the end I want TLR to be the ultimate challenge, but one players and refs enjoy playing until they catch the Legend, or even beyond that.

With this I agree, of course, but I'd like to reduce the "grinding" aspect of it - especially the time and counters required for it.

 

[LouisCyphre]

I think TLR, moreso than most other aspects of ASB, is worth discussing and iterating at great length in order to get it right. This isn't directed at any particular user, but it will benefit the game and the userbase as a whole if we take our time. Explore every avenue of challenge and devote a lot of time to discussing where to draw the line between "attrition" and "grinding," and we'll have a valuable tool on our hands. One that lets us motivate both active and new-coming ASB players to participate in the game (with hopes of catching their very own legend).

If the TLR is too easy, it's just another item on the checklist. If it's too hard, it's dismissed as a player trap. We cannot afford to squander the potential of this particular aspect of ASB, both for existing players and those to come. Please, take your time to consider every aspect of TLR when arguing each facet of its design.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

So far I'm really enthused by the discussion going on so far, lost of great points coming up!

One thing that I've seen mentioned that I'd like to see happen is the banning of combos from TLRs. As it stands these moves are simply far too advantageous for use of "the house" and significantly diminish a trainers odds of winning a battle where they perhaps outplayed their opponent to that point. A case Example is the Ice Spire Vanillish' which gets free damage every run almost without fail in the form on Ice Shard+Blizzard. Then, as mentioned you have combo whore bosses and it really becomes too much for any but the absolute best defensive battlers to make halfway decent headway.

 

[Maxim]

Hmm, okay. After reading through most of this thread over the past few days, I think I can distill TLR's problems to three main components.

1. Length

As we know, TLRs are definitely the longest Roleplay we have, and not really in a good way. In fact, all other Roleplays that have taken a really long time besides TLR (such as Rediamond's ill fated ASM) have all failed spectacularly. TLR survives at least partially by the fact that the prize is so great. The length is probably one of the biggest problems, due to the fact that you could potentially spend 6 months trying to grab a legendary only to have all that effort wasted by a party wipe.

2. Cost

The CC cost to make a TLR run actually feasibly work well is quite ludicrous, as I outlined in my previous post. While some might be divided upon how much CC should be reasonable to make a good challenge, I think we can all agree that the current cost of 100+ CC is really too much. About the only ones who can afford that kind of price tag are really good players and really good referees.

3. Luck

Possibly the subject with the second most heated debate (the first most being actual difficulty). During most of ASB, we've tried to condense and codify game mechanics. Part of that process has been reducing the luck based events from battles, such as Illuminate. However, many complain that the luck is unfair, while others say there's no other way to make it difficult and not just a "choose the path of least resistance" deal.

_________________________

Earlier today, I had a bit of an idea to hopefully curtail a lot of these problems in an effective way. Hopefully we can do this without lowering the difficulty by too much. Essentially, I think we need codification for TLR.

In retrospect, I think most of the ideas I outlined above might have been too harsh, so I don't think I'll be going with that. Instead, I want to present the following ideas for consideration.

______________________________________
1. Abolish Random Nest and Trap Encounters

I know this sounds pretty radical, but hear me out. I feel like we really don't need either of these to create a viable challenge to the challenger.

For Nest Encounters, this tends to give more of a problem with length. A 3v3 triples battle, let's face it, is really difficult to referee. Due to the sheer difficulty, referees, in a general sense, are likely to postpone reffing more difficult battles for later, which exacerbates the problem with TLR's taking way too long. Even if they ref relatively fast, like 1/day, you're still looking at 3-8 rounds of battling.

For Trap Encounters, we're more concerned with luck, though length still plays a factor. Traps, in pretty much all cases, are a percentage chance for each option. Additionally, each time one is triggered it takes longer. What this means is that not only are you hoping the RNG won't trigger since you'll lose health, but it also lengthens the time to attempt a legendary considerably because the lost health might trigger a game over, and the battle itself will likely take more than the two rounds for you to get to it.

2. Codify the TLR Dungeons.

Right now, making TLR Dungeons is pretty freeform. You come up with a legendary idea, get it approved by Deck, then start making a dungeon based on what has been made before. However, this can make some pretty bad things happen. The length of the dungeons aren't codified at all, so you could have one Uber dungeon be really long, but with large breathers in between, or a really short one that murders you at every turn. As such, I'd like everyone to consider a more codified format to dungeons.

Beginner:

Lackeys->RP Line->Legendary

(Maybe this one should have some guardians within, but I don't know.)

Legendary:

Lackeys->RP Line->Guardians->RP Line->Legendary

Uber:

Lackeys->RP Line->Challenge Battle->RP Line->Guardians->RP Line->Challenge Battle->RP Line->Legendary

Lackeys: This essentially works the same way it does now. A group of enemies intercepts you at the entrance. However, if we get rid of Nests and Traps, then it might be a good idea to buff these considerably in order for them to form more effective meatshields and in general make a better challenge.

RP Line: Basically, this is the biggest change I'm thinking of. Instead of having a few separated roleplaying events, we'd have a chain of them connected together. I think the best example of what I mean is the "Wood or Stone?" area of the Bladed Grass Meadow. Here, you are given an initial option, and then based on that option, you're given a bevy of other options until eventually you get to the end. However, unlike that, I was hoping that whichever "exit" you take has a different effect on the resulting battle, whether for good or for ill. For instance, you might get to the Guardian Battle in an alcove above your opponents, and can push down some rocks to deal some initial damage, or you might accidentally waltz into an ambush. Naturally, some RNG or something may need to be involved to avoid constant "boon" endings, but I'll leave that discussion to you guys.

Guardians: Same thing we have for current TLR's, only a buff may be appreciated to account for changes.

Challenge Battles: Essentially, these are the replacements for Nest and Trap battles. Instead of them being completely random, they would be instead known issues that may come up in the middle of an RP line in Uber dungeons. Alternatively, they could be worked into a type of Guardian challenge only somewhat weaker.

Legendary: Pretty self explanatory.

3. Implement a Codified capture system.

I don't have any specific suggestions for this one, except that Objection's system seems like a good place to start. Frankly, going into a dungeon, making all that work and effort pay off by getting to the legendary, only for bad luck with Pokeballs utterly destroying your progress seems like a really bad idea. I think this alone could help immensely to make it more accessible.

______________________
That's really all I have.

 

[zarator]

Something which nearly everyone seemed to agree on is the reduction of CC costs involved. I want therefore to suggest the following price cuts:

Potion: from 5 CC to 1 CC
Super Potion: from 8 CC to 2 CC
Ether: from 5 CC to 1 CC
Elixir: from 10 CC to 4 CC
Revive: from 10 CC to 4 CC

Poke Ball: From 3 CC to 0.5 CC (i.e. 1 CC per 10 balls)
Great Ball: From 4 CC to 1 CC
Ultra Ball and other balls: from 5 CC to 2 CC

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Ether to 2 CC, Elixir and Revive to 5, Poke Balls to 1, Great Balls to 2, Ultra Balls to 3 and I agree.

 

[Engineer Pikachu]

Not really. By reducing time or counters required for TLRs, we simply allow them to be challenged more often.

If less counters are required to get to the end, it becomes easier to get to the end. If getting to the end requires less luck, then it becomes easier to get to the end as well because you won't get RNG screwed as often. Reducing duration will let you challenge them more often, but other than that I have no clue what you're saying.

If you're saying that such TLRs would be too complex because we need a higher number of encounters than five (by encounters I don't mean necessary battles - RP events will do, too), then I think it can be easily fixed. What is really time consuming about TLRs are battles, not RP events in themselves. As long as TLRs don't require you to go over seven or more fights (which would require a fuckton of rounds to go through), I'm fine adding some extra RP events for variety and enjoyment.

I'm saying a TLR isn't complex enough if we have five or less "encounters," because honestly Lackeys – RP1 – Guardians – RP2 – Boss is pretty boring. I'm not advocating "every TLR must have at least seven battles;" I'm advocating that forcing a structure that's short or simple to the extent of the one above is a detriment to TLR. In the same vein, I disagree with Maxim's proposal to force all TLRs into identical flows; do we really need completely standardized lengths in order to have a good dungeon? I don't think so.

Reducing CC costs
It is true that they're sort of expensive right now but I don't think we need to slash them down this much. I'd support something like:

Potion / Ether: 2 CC
Super Potion: 4 CC
Elixir / Revive: 6 CC

combined with another suggestion below to make the entire item part of TLR much simpler

Backpack Consolidation
Your typical backpack as of now looks something like this:

Current Uber Backpack

Potion: 2 slots
Super Potion: 2 slots
Ether: 2 Slots
Elixir: 1 Slot
Revive: 2 Slots
Pokeballs: 75
Berries: 45
Battle Items: 25
Gems: 25
Spare Pocket (any item): 4

Which is sort of confusing and at the same time quite limiting (or not limiting enough) – you'll most likely hit the cap on your healing items, while you might come out of a TLR with one Berry or Gem. I'd like to consolidate it into something much easier to sort and organize:

Proposed Uber Backpack

Healing Item: 8 max
Pokeballs: 75 max
Battle Items: 20 max
Consumables: 50 max

Chances are, you're never going to hit the cap for consumables or battle items, but whatever. Moving all of the healing items into one category allows you to stock up on what your team needs; if you're going to stall your way through, you're going to need Ethers, but if you're going for raw damage the Potions are going to be more beneficial. This means that (with reduced costs) Potions are most likely never going to be used, so I'd also propose a small nerf to Super Potion (40 HP -> 35 HP) so that if you have a ton of extra healing item slots you can buy Potions to gain a small edge. Alternatively, we could split healing items into two tiers but that just seems overly complicated.

Dogfish also said something about making backpacks identical across all TLRs, which I'm sort of on the fence about; it certainly makes the less difficult TLRs much easier, but it might then make them too easy to power through with a bloated backpack full of healing.

Despite all this talk, however, I still think the most difficult part of TLR is rules, not dungeon difficulty; as Dogfish mentioned, having only one substitution made TLR incredibly difficult. I'd like to see what happens with TLR when we fix this problem, and then address the others if we still judge there to be a large issue.

 

[LouisCyphre]

Everything that you're worried about in regards to lowered cost/luck elements can be offset by real difficulty; that is, strength of opponents and arenas. We have more sliders to adjust difficulty with beyond "pay X cc to win."

 

[Deck Knight]

Ideas I like potentially:

In regards to Length:

Nests are already fairly well structured, and really the only ones that are long are the triples matches. If I busted them down to a maximum of 2 opponents, but made the opponents slightly stronger individually that would cut down on the length while not affecting the difficulty. There are already nests that only have two opponents (e.g. a Two Lairon nest), so this isn't even novel. I think trap mechanics are fine, the whole point of a trap is surviving the two rounds before the rest of your team can beat up on the lone opponent.

In regards to Difficulty:

While I'm wary of this, open-source Pokemon Charts might go a long way to helping TLRs figure out how to prepare. The idea of TLR is that there is enough variety that no one single strategy is going to get you through a dungeon. The Pokemon do have ways to fight back against type-stacking and other standard strategies. The big issue I have with letting it be open source is the trap springing mechanisms. If the player knows them, they might purposely damage or expend energy on their own Pokemon to prepare for a given trap.

On the other hand, open source would allow there to be an even bigger array of traps and nests, and therefore make such preparation attempts potentially backfire. I would still like TLR to be more like a Roleplaying Adventure than a grueling seven-battle slog. I'd still be wary of some RPs being opened source if they have a maze-like element, but maybe that would work out for the best.

I think changing the rules on Guardians and Bosses so that there could be two subs, and bosses don't always go last (I'm thinking Last / Last / First / Last Last / First rather than the ordinary cycle) would significantly reduce difficulty without making TLR too easy.